The Buried and The Forgotten

This is another writing prompt I heard on another writing site I frequent. The prompt is this: write a short story (or whatever) about returning to a childhood home only to find it is condemned. Maybe it's the fact that I'm slightly macabre* in what I write, but this totally feels like the beginning to a horror story or something. So, here it is, for your reading enjoyment:

*Speaking of "macabre", don't you hate it when you only ever use/see a word is in it's written form so you have no idea how to pronounce it? I love this word but I never use it in conversation because either way I try to say it, sounds wrong. Actually, they both just sound pretentious as f@#k, so I try to avoid them.

The Buried and The Forgotten

                "Condemned DO NOT ENTER"

                The words were written across a paper and taped to the heavy wooden door. The sign bulged in the middle, where the brass knocker sat beneath it.

                “Shit,” Penny said, looking over the door. “It’s not that old.”

                “Maybe it’s asbestos or something,” Gerald said and took  a step back.

                Penny darted down the porch steps and looked up at the house. Her short, black hair blew against her hand that shielded her eyes from the sun. “Do you think the cellar’s locked up?”

                “I don’t know. Probably. Can we just get out of here?” It wasn’t his idea to come in the first place.  

                “Where’s your sense of nostalgia?”

                “Nostalgia isn't even a sense, Penny...it’s a feeling,” Gerald said, stomping down the steps. He stopped on the last one and kicked it a few times with his heel. “Hear that? Termites. Place is falling apart.”

                “It hasn’t come down in the last 20 years. I think it’ll last a couple more minutes,” she said. She looked down either side of the street. The coast was clear.  “You coming or not?” she asked before disappearing behind the side of the house.

                Gerald cursed and kicked a divot into the brown grass but followed her.

                Penny knelt over the cellar doors, examining the lock. It was a cheap padlock fixed around a loosely held slide lock. She turned and greeted Gerald with an Oh please look.

                “Heads up,” he said, tossing her a broken chunk of cement.  If you can't beat 'em..., he thought.

                Penny took off her pink cardigan and wrapped it around the cement block. A dull clang echoed through the air and the lock was discarded. Penny held up her cardigan to reveal a gaping hole in the middle and made a face.

                “I thought you hated that sweater,” Gerald said.

                “I do. It’s just...now I have to go buy a new one.” She tied the sweater around her waist and pulled the particle board doors open. They fell to the sides with a thud.

                “Pen,” he said, grabbing her by the arm before she could descend the stairs. “Are you sure about this?”

                “It’s what Mom wanted, Ger.”

                “Yeah but what if someone sees us, recognizes us?”

                “That won’t happen once we’re inside, now will it?” Penny turned back to the black filled hole before her and stepped down the cement steps. “Pass me a flashlight.”

                Gerald shrugged the knapsack off his shoulder, letting it fall into his hand. He threw her the larger of the two flashlights.

                Like a submarine exploring the inky depths of the sea, she descended into the dark cellar.

                Gerald  walked up to the steps. The warm, humid air seeped out like vaporous mildew. He crinkled his nose and followed behind, flashlight poised in front.  His hands followed the cement wall as he took each step. There are some things that stay with you no matter how far away or long ago they were. The feel of course cement, the taste of moist air laden with cement chalk, the sound of a sledge hammer against...

                He was back on level ground, at the bottom of the stairs. Penny was already ahead, searching the cellar. Was she still feeling...nostalgic?

                “It hasn’t changed. Seems smaller now, though,” she said, flashlight searching the room.

                “You were a kid when we left here. I’m surprised you remember it at all.”

                “I wasn’t that young, Ger.”

                “No. But people have a way of forgetting...some things.” 

                Penny shone the light in his eyes, blinding him. “I remember.”

                He threw a hand over his eyes. “Yeah."

                She turned away and went back to looking around.

                Gerald followed her with the flashlight. The stairs were only a few feet away. They were steep and wooden, probably rotted through by now.  Luckily for them, what was under the stairs was what they were here for.

                Penny stood by a wall, examining  the tools and pictures fixed to the wall. The old  man’s things. Gerald had no interest in revisiting them. He went straight for the stairs. Crouching beneath them, he scanned the floor with his flashlight. The outline of the hole was as obvious as ever. A thin layer of newer, course cement spread over a thick layer of plaster of paris. He shook his head at his mother’s amateur notion of masonary.  “Found it,” he called to Penny.

                “There you are,” she said, looking down at the floor. “Think he’s just bones by now?”

                “I don’t know. Probably.”

                “If we bust this up we can’t fill it back in, can we? Not now, like this.”

                “No, we can’t. But they’d find him anyway, if they ever got around to tearing this place down,” Gerald said, knowing that it was never going to stay hidden forever. 

                “So it doesn’t matter?”

                “I didn’t say that. But you’re right. It’s what Mom wanted. Go close the doors,” he said, opening the knapsack again. Finding the rubber mallet and railroad spike was easy. They were two of three things left in the bag.

The little light filtering into the cellar from the hanging doors was snuffed out with a bang as Penny closed up.  The teeth-jarring sound of iron chipping away cement resounded through the dark cellar.

Gerald and Penny would never understand why it meant so much to their mother to be buried along with their father but, like it or not, it was her last wish. And the sooner it was finished, the sooner they could go back to their own anonymous lives and never see the other again.

Power Outage

I'm going to start writing and posting more super-short stories specially for the blog. I need as much practice as I can get so I figure using writing prompts is a good way to get things started :) I have a whole list of good ones that I'm going to use over the next little while but if anyone has any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.

So here I go with my first attempt. The idea is to write a story that takes place during a power outage. That's it. Let me know what you think.

                       Power Outage

     “Nope, nothing,” Gill said, flicking the switch. “I guess the power’s out.”

     “Shit. That’s just what I need,” said Melody, smoothing back her fly away hairs. She loosened the tight, standard-issue, tie from her neck and unbuttoned the top of her blouse. “I just wanted to come home and relax, maybe have a bath, but no.”

     “Honey, go sit down. It’s probably just a fuse.”

     “No, I’m sorry. You’ve probably had a bad day too,” she said, forcing a wide smile that was wasted on darkness.

     “Alright, just wait here. I’ll go grab some flashlights.” Gill disappeared behind the white wall of the livingroom, leaving Melody alone.

     She threw herself on the couch, reclining and savouring the moment off her feet. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply and forced positive thoughts through her mind, a tactic she’d heard often but never really mastered.  Her mother told her again and again that she should meditate. It would help her, she said but it never felt like anything other than sitting in her bed, trying not to think. Not thinking seemed preferable in moments like these but never very useful. She sighed, “What’s the point?” she said to the empty room. Melody closed her eyes again and tried to focus on her breath.

     In the middle of falling asleep, she jerked awake, feeling shaken. She sat up on the couch and looked around. Her eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness of the room to see general shapes but still not enough.

     “Gill?” She continued to call out to him as she walked across the room. There wasn’t even the hint of an answer.  She left the livingroom and stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the black basement. “Gill-” she whispered.

     Without the quiet hum of the heater, the house was too quiet. She rested a hand against the wall; it was like ice. Cold seemed to invade the house from the walls, slowly seeping in.  How long had she been sleeping? Had she slept?

     She knew she should go downstairs, Gill probably just couldn’t hear her. The basement always made her feel on edge though, even in the best of moments.  She couldn’t see down into the depths of the basement more than a few metres but she knew she couldn't go. She felt as if she was being pulled down into it, drawn there by some unseen force. Melody tried to turn away, wanting to be anywhere else but there but she couldn't move. Invisible arms drew her to plunge down the stairs, unseen hands urged her to plummet into the darkness. Disembodied voices whispered warnings in her mind while high-pitched hisses circled her head.

     “Gill,” she barely forced out.

     From the darkness came a soft chuckle; a familiar but dark laugh. 

     It couldn’t be him, she told herself, I would know. 

     The voices swarming her ears grew more urgent.  Out of the depths of the darkness emerged a hand; bloated and pale, reaching for her, wearing a wedding ring matching hers.

     “Melody...”, a soft, sickingly-sweet voice sang. It was seductive and nauseating.

 She fought to cover her ears, certain that if she heard that voice again, she would be lost. She managed little more than bending her arms at strange angles.

“We’ve been looking for you a long time, Melody,” called another voice as another hand pierced the black wall in front of her. This hand was smaller, with long, dark painted nailed. It beckoned to her. “We won’t let you go now.”

A pained gasp escaped her lips. She knew it was true. She knew her whole life had led her here. After they took Nicky from her and Gill, she knew it was only a matter of time before they came for her.  No one in her family escaped them.

“If I come,” she struggled to speak, “will you leave Denise alone?”

Her question was met with silence. Maybe they didn’t lower themselves to converse with their prey.

“Denise wants to be found,” the voices hissed.

“Bullshit,” Melody spat.

“Just like you. We’ll find her in your blood.”

Her mouth dropped open. The poisonous fog in her mind began to clear. “That’s it then, isn’t it?” she said.

The hands paused suddenly and disappeared back into the darkness. She didn’t have enough hope left to think they would leave her now. Not when they were so close.  

     “It is...you can’t find her without me. You need me to get to her,” she cried, finding, if not hope, at least a reason to keep fighting. “Go fuck yourselves,” she screamed down the stairs.

A cold, wheezing wind blew past her face, pushing her backwards onto the floor. Something pulled her along the floor, picking up speed as she flew down the endless hall. She slammed against the far wall, cheap dry wall falling around her head. She coughed through the dust while her whole body shook with adrenaline.

     The house was quiet again. The darkness blinked away as the lights came back on. Relief washed over her momentarily but receded when she remembered Gill.

     “Honey?” she called, knowing she wouldn’t get an answer. She crawled towards the stairs, fighting back tears. “Baby...”

     The bottom of the stairs came into view along with a twisted pair of legs. She choked back a gasp and continued, closing her eyes. Opening them only when she felt the edge of the first step, she saw the bruised and bloodied form of her husband, his head and extremities bent in wrong ways. She stopped fighting the sobs choking her.

     “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry baby,” she whispered through her tears. “I should have...told you.”  

     Her crying tapered, leaving her hiccupping and clinging to the rail. When she had gathered her wits enough to move again, she lowered herself down the stairs, step by step. Melody crept past her husband’s corpse and around to the cubbyhole under the stairs where she dug out the shovel. She threw it to the top of the stairs and turned around to the body at her feet. His ankles were cold and hard as she picked them up and dragged him up the stairs, whispering how sorry she was.